Questions for a UFO Expert: Bruce Maccabee on the Real X-Files, Roswell and His Own UFO Sighting

As scientific disciplines go, UFOlogy (pronounced you-FOL-oh-gee)—the study of understanding unidentified flying objects—does not get the level of respect that's accorded to, say, physics. Dr. Bruce Maccabee has a foot in both fields. He was an optical physicist for the U.S. Navy, now retired, and doubles as a dedicated ufologist. PM talked to Maccabee this week about his work.

Bruce Maccabee traces his involvement with UFOlogy to a lecture he attended by an UFO hunting organization called the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. At the time, he was earning his doctorate in physics at American University in Washington, D.C., and soon after the lecture, he signed up to volunteer for the Committee's office. Maccabee has since gone on to investigate dozens of UFO incidents including the Trent Farm incident of 1950, and he has written more than a hundred papers as one of the preeminent voices in the formal science of removing the "un" from "unidentified flying objects."

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PM: What is the FBI's "flying-disc file"?

Maccabee: The FBI's flying-disc file began in the summer of 1947 after sightings of what we now call UFOs began in earnest. A sighting in Mount Rainer, Washington, was the first such event to be publicized in national newspapers in the United States. Kenneth Arnold, the witness and an experienced pilot, talked about semicircular craft traveling at great speed and flipping and flashing as they bounced along. He said it was somewhat like skipping a saucer on the water, which led to some clever newsman coining "flying saucers." A barrage of flying saucer sightings followed, including reports from Air Force officers seeing unknown things fly over their bases. On July 10, top Air Force intelligence generals asked the FBI if they would investigate to see if Communist sympathizers were generating spurious, false stories about craft with extreme dynamic capabilities to scare the American people into thinking that the Soviet Union had gotten far ahead of us. That was considered subversive activity, and of course the FBI was hot on subversion at the time. The FBI investigated for two months, interviewing a dozen or so witnesses, and some of the case reports were filed under--believe it or not--"Security Matter X." So we're talking about the real X-Files.

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How did you get access to these documents?

I had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in the fall of 1976, so I figured sometime around 2010 I would get a response. So I was very surprised when I got a phone call at my desk in May 1977 from a very surprised FBI investigator saying he'd found 1600 pages of UFO-related stuff.

What is in these X-Files?

Amid the interoffice memoranda and newspaper clippings, I realized there was some pretty hot-potato stuff. For example, it was the first time that there was any public knowledge of the FBI's involvement with UFO investigations. J. Edgar Hoover [the long-time FBI Director] had lied in the 1960s about that. Though the FBI found no evidence of pro-Communist subversion, this arrangement opened a doorway for the Air Force to contact the FBI and send more UFO information. From then on the FBI acted like a black hole--stuff would go in, but nothing would come out. Basically, the Air Force continued telling things about UFOs to the FBI that they did not share with the American public. In 1998, the X-Files were posted on the FBI's website, and you can read more in my book called The UFO/FBI Connection.

What about the Roswell, New Mexico, incident of July 7, 1947, when a flying saucer allegedly crashed in the desert?

I think Roswell was covered up to the extent that people in Air Force intelligence didn't even know about it. The FBI is involved in a piece of it, too--a document notes that telephonic conversation between Air Force people indicated that the crash remains did not fully meet the description of a weather balloon (the official explanation). For those of us on the outside, we have no hard evidence. The case for Roswell actually started in 1979 when Jesse Marcel, the Army Major who played a role in the recovery of the crash debris, started publicly saying how he thought it was an alien spaceship. Until then, Roswell had totally dropped out of UFO history.

It was September 16, 1991, in Gulf Breeze, Florida. In November 1990 they started having nightly reports of this red light thing in the sky that very often would burst into flashes and go out. Sometimes it went from white to red or back. Mostly it was one object, but sometimes there were multiple ones. News crews went down there several times, and from as far away as Japan and Germany. It was thought that these sightings might be gas bag balloons with flares attached--a hoax. But triangulation of an object showed that it moved at 30 miles per hour crosswind, which can only be done if you have a powered device. So if it was a hoax, you'd have to have a blimp or perhaps an unmanned aerial vehicle that carried one or more complex pyrotechnic display devices. It couldn't just be a regular road flare given the color changes and flashing. If this is a hoax, it's a major one. I thought I had better go. So one night we're out there at the south end of the Pensacola Bay Bridge and a lady yelled, "There it is!" I looked up in the sky and saw a spot of lights. Then through my binoculars--the standard necklace for night-watching--I saw the image resolve itself into eight tiny white lights with a yellow tinge. I went ahead and tried to do my measurements. I had brought with me a "big ear," which is a sensitive microphone for listening at a distance. I couldn't hear a thing. The UFO moved somewhat and then disappeared. I didn't call the guys in white coats to take me away because 30 other people saw the same thing. We got a lot of pictures of these sightings, which allowed for analysis. By knowing how big the image is on film, you can calculate its angular size out to a distance of a mile or two or 10. In this instance, it got to the point where it was like turning on a chandelier, tens of feet in diameter, at an altitude of a mile--now how the hell do you do that?